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Dr. Bruce Vladeck

Biography

Bruce C. Vladeck is Professor of Health Policy and Geriatrics at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.

Research Interests

Bruce C. Vladeck is Professor of Health Policy and Geriatrics at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. He is also a member of the New York City Board of Health, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Primary Care Development Corporation, and Chairman of Senior Health Partners, a managed long-term care program. He is a Trustee of Ascension Health, the March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation, the National Academy of Social Insurance, and the Medicare Rights Center.

From 1993 through 1997, Dr. Vladeck was Administrator of the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. In that position, he directed the Medicare and Medicaid programs, providing health insurance to more than 65 million Americans with combined annual expenditures of more than $300 billion, and played a central role in the formulation and enactment of the Medicare, Medicaid, and Child Health provisions of the Balanced Budget Act of 1997. Subsequent to his service at HCFA, Dr. Vladeck was appointed by President Clinton to the National Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare, a role that helped reinforce his reputation as one of the nation’s most committed and articulate advocates for improving and expanding health insurance for the elderly, the disabled, and the poor.

Before joining the federal government, Dr. Vladeck served ten years as President of the United Hospital Fund of New York. He has also held positions on the faculty of Columbia University, at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and, from 1979 through 1982, as Assistant Commissioner of the New Jersey State Department of Health.

At the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, to which he was elected in 1986, Dr. Vladeck chaired the Committee on Health Care for Homeless People. Among many other honors and awards, Dr. Vladeck received the 1995 National Public Service Award, the 1996 Hubert H. Humphrey Award of the American Political Science Association, and the 1998 President’s Award of the American Society on Aging.

A nationally-recognized expert on health care policy, health care financing, and long-term care, Dr. Vladeck has published widely, perhaps most notably in his book, Unloving Care: The Nursing Home Tragedy (Basic Books: 1980). He received his BA, magna cum laude, from Harvard College, and an MA and Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Michigan